Melissa Eblen-Zayas

Purpose: Explore how materials have been engineered throughout history and how natural resources and economics have affected their societal role

Discussion: Eras in human history are often identified by the principal material used for tools—the stone age and the bronze age, for example. How would we define the present era? The silicon age? The plastic age? The carbon age? What lessons can we learn from the past to inform the development and use of materials in the future?

Student projects: Make tools from stone and metal to understand past eras; use state-of-the-art equipment to compare structures of different materials

Jessica Leiman

associate professor of English

Course title: “The Gothic Spirit: At Home and Abroad”

Purpose: Study the 18th- and 19th-century British Gothic novel—a sensational genre with themes of horror, madness, and the supernatural—to examine its distinction between “home” (Protestant England, where the novels’ readers presumably lived) and “abroad” (an imagined medieval Catholic Europe, where the novels often were set)

Field trips: Strawberry Hill, Horace Walpole’s inspiration for Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel; the Brontë sisters’ home in Haworth; European cathedrals, ruins, and castles; Alpine vistas

Discussion: How did a revival of interest in Gothic architecture in late-18th-century England fuel the genre? Why did this genre, reflecting a popular interest in irrational forces, become popular during the so-called Age of Reason?

David Liben-Nowell

associate professor of computer science

Course title: “Computer Science before Computers”

Purpose: Study early computational devices, such as the Jacquard Loom (built around 1800), whose weaving pattern could be programmed using punch cards; Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine (the first recognizable computer, designed around the 1820s but never built); and the early computers used at Bletchley Park in England to break the German cryptographic system during World War II

Field trips: See original or replica devices at the Science Museum in London, the Computer History Museum in California, and Bletchley Park

Aaron Rushing

Purpose: Identify and discuss factors that affect the outcome of a game, including pitch selection, backing up bases, effective communication on relays and bunt plays, well-timed pickoff plays, aggressive base running, and the choices made by coaches and players

Assignment: Watch college and professional games with a focus on details; discuss baseball fundamentals, emphasizing why rather than how